Dawn Is Me

There’s less than three hours left in 2008, the year dubbed by Kimmie as “the worst year ever,” and I’ve been reading about Faith’s new little Chicklet.

Which seems as good a topic as any to ring in a brand new year, huh?

Actually, I’m getting a really big kick out of watching Faith’s public love affair with her baby son. It’s been 22 years since I was right where she is now, first time mom to enchanting, fascinating and (to me, at least) infinitely cute small man.

You probably don’t need me to tell you this, but that was a long time ago.

Right now, my family is draped about various spots down here with me: David, now very large and taller than his dad (much to Dad’s chagrin); Gina, smart and sexy, strutting around with the supreme confidence of somebody with a whole life ahead of them; Kimmie, growing into her womanhood as awkwardly as we all did and still managing to be one of the most interesting people I ever met; Ricky, not so much a ‘baby’ anymore, due to shoot up to be taller than Mom any second now …

One of the best things about having kids is that watching them is a lot like watching the future happen in your own living room.

I wish Faith much joy in the journey. I hope she has as much fun as I’ve had.

So, beyond my New Year’s wishes for my family, and especially my wonderful, wondrous children, I want to wish a very special Happy New Year to Faith and her Chicklet — the first of many, I’m sure.

(Yes, that really is a line from a song and 75 points if you can figure out which song it’s from)

I don’t know if I mentioned this before but one of the nice things about having younglings around you is that, if you’re open to that sort of thing, they can tremendously expand your horizons.

That explains why I’ve gotten into reading shojo manga.

This is something of a guilty secret. Shojo manga is sort of a cross between comic books and Young Adult romance novels, with the sort of cultural twist you might expect from artists (mangaka) who do not hail from the Judeo-Christian West.

The result is a set of stories that are not as sappy as what you’ll find from a love story written for the average American 15 year old.

Not as sappy but often just as stupid.

When I read romances written by Western authors, I find myself wondering how the girl could possibly ever have fallen in love with a guy who treats her like that?

On the other hand, when I read shojo manga, I wonder why there never were guys in the western hemisphere who were more like that.

My hunch is that the guys portrayed in those manga probably resemble real men and boys as little as the men in Harlequin Romances do. I just think it’s interesting, these cultural differences in tastes in men.

Then again, given how many young American girls drool over shojo manga, it may be that women’s taste in men is undergoing a shift.

Don’t say you weren’t warned, fellas.

Another of the things I’ve been doing that falls under the category of ‘expanding my cultural horizons’ is listening to J-Pop. Well, oriental pop, I guess.

I make you two gifts, by way of example.

This is Sera by Jeo Qu-Cheon. I first heard it in a flash movie called “Hot Fish,” fell in love with it and then spent years trying to find it. Now that I have, I couldn’t not share. It’s good music to make slow, sensual, erotic love to.

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And, just so you don’t think I spend all my time doing the horizontal mambo (or thinking about it), here’s a party song called Hero’s Come Back by Nobody Knows +. Actually, it’s theme music from somewhere in the Naruto anime. I can’t tell you where, since I’m not a Naruto fan; you’ll have to get somebody else to help you out on that one.

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Turn up the speakers and par-tay!

Hey, Ricky! Hey, Ricky! (Yes, I know it’s supposed to be ‘Mickey’ but, as a parent, I am allowed to occasionally take liberties with song lyrics.)

So, yeah, that’s enough of that dreary stuff.

Before I do anything else, I feel I must make my baby welcome to the blogosphere. Yes, that’s right, Ricky now has a blog. It’s another Christmas present but I didn’t get it finished until today because I’m just occasionally lame like that.

I probably should have gotten him to think of a different name. Sometime around the time he’s fifteen or sixteen, when it becomes terribly important to him to be terminally cool, he’s not going to want that domain name anymore.

Too bad, baby!

Meanwhile, I think I need to get myself out of the habit of going to bed at 8 a.m. That’s going to get inconvenient when school starts again. It’s going to make work tough, too.

So, today, I’m going to bed an hour early, at around 7 a.m. If I’m lucky, by the time I get up later today, Ricky will have started blogging.